Transmission From Pirate Station Ends

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32312, 2 June 1970, Page 16

Transmission From Pirate Station Ends

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, June 1. The world’s last commercial pirate radio station closed tonight.

At 10 p.m. power was cut; off from the old submarine transmitter on board the Radio Hauraki transmission ship Tiri II more than three years after regular transmissions began from the Hauraki Gulf.

Announcers, technicians, and crew members on board the yellow-painted, 191-ton coaster toasted the last minutes of sea-based transmission in champagne. Soon afterwards the 62-year-old vessel left its moor-' ings in the often-boisterous Colville Channel, between Great Barrier Island and the Coromandel Peninsula, for the last time and headed back to port in Auckland. Announcers broadcast live i from the ship for 72 hours' during the holiday week-end before the tape-recorded hourlong documentary on the history of Radio Hauraki ended Jhe programme. Radio Hauraki has become the only pirate radio station to gain a licence to transmit legitimately from land. Broad-

easts are expected to begin; again late in September. The master of the transmis-l sion vessel for the last two years and eight months, 48-year-old Mr L. Griffiths, said today: “Seamanship and determination have helped us, but it is 60 per cent luck that has got us through.”